Gee muses

Many years ago, Tom Waits ended his concert twirling an umbrella fast, faster, faster still, as confetti cascaded down from the ceiling. Eventually he just disappeared. It was beautifully choreographed yet random and spontaneous. And that’s the thing about confetti – it draws any number of illusions and allusions depending on the individual.

Little Birdy’s third album is entitled Confetti and the title track closes the record – an austere, yet glittering atmosphere in which you can hear the chunks of ice being carved, and it also resonates splendidly as a title. Confetti is a collection of very individual pieces that fly around independently yet somehow remain part of the vast – yet pared back – sound the West Australians, now resident in Melbourne, have chosen to offer.

It is Little Birdy’s first shot at producing and it’s a splendid success. Instead of falling for the ‘let’s-throw-everything-in-there’ kind of overkill many virgin producers are drawn to, Little Birdy and engineer, Steven Schram, have gone for what could best be called hi-fi minimalism. Arctic airs, mixed with the warm of breezes of edgy Americana, while the pop is a cool summer’s day and the rock hot but not meltingly so. It is an album that will grow on repeated listening. Deceptively simple but strong.

Lead singer and songwriter, Katy Steele, and drummer, Matt Chequer, have just spent the day together but didn’t realise they were paired for a phoner so when Matt joins the conversation Katy is kind of confused for a few moments.

For Steele, Confetti, production and the songs onboard are a coming of age for a woman who had her doubts about the band coming into the record.

“Before we started the record we weren’t sure where we stood with each other,” Katy says. “I had this time off from the band where I went away on my own and toured supporting Paul Kelly as a solo act. That was me needing to prove myself as a person.

“But the guys said ‘we can do this; trust us’ and I developed a lot of trust for them so we started the album in a good spot instead of me thinking, as I had been, that I was much younger than them and had to prove myself to them.

“Whether or not that pressure really existed, that’s what it was like for me. When you are young you don’t realise what you are doing and I had a lot going on in my head. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself.”

Matt says the guys realised that pressure was there. “It was a matter of letting her have her space. The Paul Kelly tour was good spot to let Katy grow.”

The Kelly influence extends to Confetti with Kelly appearing on harmonica and backing vocals on Brother, the first single. “He’s been a pretty massive influence on me for a number of years,” Steele says. “He’s a very interesting character. The main thing that influences me is that he’s so humble and driven. To be that age and continually creating great songs yet be so quietly confident is inspiring.

“Having him play on the record was Matty’s idea – I wasn’t even thinking of having a harmonica on that track. He’s kooky, doesn’t speak when he doesn’t need to and I’m one of those who people who yabbers on endlessly … ”

The Confetti experience has made Little Birdy a much stronger band – and you can hear it. Somewhere in a band’s life it reaches a crisis point where all the initial excitement has gone, routine and grind has set in and what was a glittering prize seems more like a tarnished dream. Good bands, the ones that find themselves, get over that and move on. After seven years, this band needed to do that and it did.

“What I got out of the whole experience was confidence,” Matt says. “I think we’ve found how everybody works – their strengths and weaknesses – and we have great fun together. Put the other stuff aside such as record companies and managers and we are making the music we love. That’s what I want to do with these people now and as far as I’m concerned forever.”

“It’s more of an honest approach. I’ve always felt we were quite honest with what we do,” Steele says. “I just believe in myself and the guys. Like Matty said we just want to do it forever. If you can survive by doing this, you’re extremely lucky. I think we’ve had it pretty easy so far but now we’re working hard and we’re earning the right.”

Part of that work ethic was Steele’s own songwriting routine. It reminds me of the way Iva Davies, of Flowers and Icehouse, used to write in the early and mid-1980s. “When I was still in Perth, I had a music room in my house in Mt Lawley and spent a lot of my time writing with the windows and the door closed and the blinds drawn, in darkness, and that’s where the moodiness of songs like Hairdo and Confetti, and the feel of the album you referred to, came from.”

In such surroundings Steele literally poured her heart out writing about 50 songs. “They weren’t all finished,” she says. “I had lots of lists all over my room. I was like a crazy person with pages and pages of notes.

“Then I did the Kelly solo tour and took the opportunity to try and be the best songwriter I could with just an acoustic and voice, so I had Hairdo and Confetti and six or seven others written over a year ago. It was a good time for me. And so is this.

“We’re really busy, it’s insane, exciting, we want the record to come out, it’s been so long in the making and we are proud of it and glad to be talking about it eight hours a day because we want people to listen to it.”

Amid the confetti, a Little Birdy sings.